Rick Steves’ Travel Blog

When visiting Cuba, it seems rich world tourists all do the same three things: tour the capital city of Havana; visit the charming colonial town of Trinidad; and commune with nature in the beautiful valley of Viñales. Trinidad and Viñales are each about a three-hour drive from Havana — one to the west and the other one east.

While we could have more efficiently hired a taxi to drive us to Vinales, we wanted to experience the local bus. The bus ride was comfortable, but getting a ticket and dealing with the bus station would have been frustrating without the help of our local guide.

A ritual for tourists in Vinales is to taxi to a hotel on the ridge and “watch the sun go down.” But rather than watching the sun disappear, we actually watched the valley to the east as the light got all warm and beautiful. Knowing we’d be riding through this valley — so famed for its tobacco — the next day on horseback as we sipped our Cuba Libres was a nice way to cap the day.

Viñales is quite touristy. It has two main business streets and countless little eateries and places renting out rooms. With the arrival of each bus from Havana, locals who rent rooms gather to meet tourists with reservations…or to snare those without to fill empty rooms.

Our B&B in Vinales was a thriving little business for our industrious host family. The rooms were comfy, and the roosters were alarm clocks.

Photo: The Travelphile

In Viñales, it seemed the locals were already expert at running their small businesses. Our B&B hosts served memorable breakfasts and dinners on their rooftop. During one dinner, before Trish could dig into her soup, a little frog leaped into her bowl.

The tourist industry is pretty humble in Cuba. One street in Vinales is closed to traffic and filled with tiny stalls and tables filled with handmade souvenirs. For $1 to $4 each, you could have your pick of Cuban baseballs, maracas, finely carved Christmas ornaments, inlaid boxes, and kitschy Revolution stuff and Che Guevara knickknacks.

My son Andy loves to get a haircut in distant lands. Here, he grabbed a seat in the outdoor barber shop and said “Cuba style, please.” (Andy left us a bit early to fly directly to Europe for this semester’s study abroad tour season. His company, Weekend Student Adventures, offers great three-day weekends for American students in Europe.)

For far less than what you’d pay for a fancy hotel room in the center of town, you can rent a fine home. We went top-end — paying around $150 per night for the four of us in three rooms with breakfast via Airbnb. Here’s a little tour of the place we called home in Havana.

The sudden spike in tourism in an economy with nowhere near enough infrastructure — plus the embargo that makes it complicated to make payments from the USA or by credit card — means that booking a room ahead is frustrating. Hotels can be booked up long in advance, with the demand resulting in prices that are jacked way up. The good travelers I met relied entirely on rooms in private homes, or casas particulares. The Cuban government now allows normal citizens to rent rooms to foreigners, including Americans. Airbnb and Cuban equivalents make this pretty easy. But making reliable reservations and payments in advance can be a challenge unless you’re working with an agency that is not Cuban (like Airbnb — which, in Cuba, is only available to Americans — or Canada-based Point2Cuba).

We stayed in a fine home in the elegant Miramar neighborhood, a 15-minute taxi ride from the old center. The entire rooftop was an inviting patio with fine views of the neighborhood.

Photo: The Travelphile

The inside of our casa particular was an entire floor with three bedrooms. A maid served us breakfast each morning. Just like cars are vintage 1950s, living rooms seemed to have changed little in half a century.

As anywhere, a big part of the joy of staying at B&Bs (along with saving money and having a more comfortable and spacious home on the road rather than a tight little hotel room) is the opportunity to get to know the family that also lives there. We stayed in four different B&Bs in two weeks, and each family was a delight.

In our Havana B&B, we had no keys as there was a 24/7 doorman. I don’t know quite how this fits into the socialist ethic, but I must admit that having our friendly doorman greet us at all hours when we came and went was comforting.

Cuban food? Imagine if the USSR were in the tropics. It’s tasty — if you like pork. Pork is king. Beef, chicken, rice, and beans are also available. Even though the island is surrounded by the Caribbean, seafood is nothing to seek out. Rum drinks are cheap and plentiful, but don’t expect much in the way of fruits and vegetables. A trip to the supermarket shows long shelves in the meat department empty except for a handful of uniform sausages at one end.

Restaurant menus that list far more than what’s actually available reflect a supply challenge caused by a command economy resisting the laws of supply and demand. Many Cubans suffer from hypertension and diabetes, which local doctors attribute to too much fat — and, locals (who generally seem comfortable complaining about the system, if not about Fidel) add, “the stress of dealing with a frustrating bureaucracy.” Tourists carefully avoid local water. Bottled water is cheap and everywhere.

While the government is slowly opening up opportunities for private and creative restaurants catering to people with enough money to be foodies, they have a long way to go. Privately run paladares promise to raise Cuban cuisine above government-run canteens. But with the ongoing embargo, ingredients are limited, and even the finest chef would be hard-pressed to dazzle any eater. Dining in fine restaurants left me feeling well-fed…but not pampered.

I found the fancy tourist restaurants served food no better than places that were more basic (but still tourist-friendly). The worst two meals of the trip were our two most expensive and most touristy.

Photo: The Travelphile

While in Cuba, a very simple, yet appetizing lunch was a success. Toasted ham and cheese on good bread…gracias.